Mobile city councilman Fred Richardson calls for study of possible split from school system

(Press-Register/Mike Kittrell)On Tuesday Richardson penned a letter asking Mayor Sam Jones to commission a feasibility study to find out if a city system would be financially feasible and improve the quality of education for city students.

MOBILE, Ala. -- City Councilman Fred Richardson on Wednesday said it’s time for the city to consider running its own school system.

A city school system, he said, would be able to better coordinate social services for children, intervening in the lives of troubled students before they become full fledged criminals.

On Tuesday Richardson penned a letter asking Mayor Sam Jones to commission a feasibility study to find out if a city system would be financially feasible and improve the quality of education for city students.

Jones said in an interview on Wednesday that the city would need to “look very closely,” at the consequences of separation both for city and county students before heading in that direction.

The superintendent of the Mobile County Public School System, Roy Nichols, said the city’s split would financially devastate the county system, particularly given the city’s recent annexation of commercial corridors on Schillinger Road and in Tillman’s Corner.

If Mobile left, Nichols said, there would be little to no commercial property left to support schools that serve the remainder of the county, including Prichard, Bayou La Batre and Citronelle.

A split would also further skew the racial composition of city schools, many of which are already nearly all Black, he said.

The two most successfully integrated high schools in the city, Davidson and Murphy, have more diverse student bodies because many white students from the county transferred in to take advantage of their special programs.